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Tennessee football: Five takeaways from Greg Sankey’s 2023 SEC Media Days press conference

By Caleb Calhoun

Jul 18, 2022; Atlanta, GA, USA; SEC commissioner Greg Sankey delivers comments to open SEC Media Days at the College Football Hall of Fame. Mandatory Credit: Dale Zanine-USA TODAY Sports
Jul 18, 2022; Atlanta, GA, USA; SEC commissioner Greg Sankey delivers comments to open SEC Media Days at the College Football Hall of Fame. Mandatory Credit: Dale Zanine-USA TODAY Sports /
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For the most part, Greg Sankey was vague when he took the podium to kick off SEC Media Days on Monday. There was a lot of talk surrounding the state of the conference and what’s in store for the future, typical of such a press conference. However, there were plenty of tidbits of information relevant to Tennessee football.

As the event moved back to Atlanta, where it moved away from for a couple of years due to COVID, Sankey addressed the conference from a macro scale with all NCAA schools and from a micro scale, speaking about what’s in store for the SEC alone. Much of that affects the Vols.

While some of the comments were a bit unclear, they still painted a picture of what Vol fans need to focus on. With expansion changing the landscape of the sport, UT will have plenty to focus on if it’s able to ever return to prominence. Let’s take a look at the five things Sankey sad at SEC Media Days that affects Tennessee football going forward.

Sep 22, 2018; Knoxville, TN, USA; SEC logo on the field at Neyland Stadium before a game between the Tennessee Volunteers and Florida Gators. Mandatory Credit: Bryan Lynn-USA TODAY Sports
Sep 22, 2018; Knoxville, TN, USA; SEC logo on the field at Neyland Stadium before a game between the Tennessee Volunteers and Florida Gators. Mandatory Credit: Bryan Lynn-USA TODAY Sports /

5. Future scheduling still a question

In his opening remarks, Sankey mentioned specifically the meeting with coaches in Destin, Fla., earlier this year, and he noted that they will format the future league for when the Texas Longhorns and Oklahoma Sooners join “to accommodate” an eight or nine-game schedule. However, that’s not clear yet.

Sankey did joke about a 10-game league schedule, but he acknowledged that’s off the table. Still, whether or not the team plays eight or nine games remains a question, and that’s a big deal. These are some of the issues he posed on that front.

"“What happens with non-conference schedules? We have a requirement that that ninth game right now be among an autonomy five-type opponent. How do we dispose of or maintain that particular policy?”"

If the SEC expands, does Tennessee football want to stay in contracts with future Power Five schools? This is something worth paying attention to and why it would be a good thing for the Vols to find out now. Also, for a program that has struggled reaching elite bowl games in recent years, a nine-game league schedule could be brutal. The lack of information here was relevant.

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